Star Crossed
by RenkonNairu
Summary: Soulmates AU. A little dark. It wasn't a Synthroid Max saved Verdona from at their first meeting. It was an Osmosian. Max vows to protect Vedona and all Anodites from Osmosians forever... by wiping them all out. Years later, Max's granddaughter, Gwen, is an Anodite and meets her soulmate... the last living Osmosian. GWEVIN
1. Kevin

Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or its sequels, spin-offs and related characters. All is the property of Man of Action and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

Star Crossed

Prologue: Kevin

The Eradication had been going on for years -since before Kevin was born. It was the thing that brought his father to Earth in the first place. Hide from the Predator on his own home planet. He would never think to look for an Osmosian in his own back yard. And, for a while at least, it worked. Devin had many successful years of safety on Earth. He even met his soulmate.

Leah Levin.

They married, he adopted the Earth custom of using surnames and took Leah's last name. They had Kevin and for eleven years lived a happy and peaceful life in New York. Then something changed. Kevin never even knew what. To this day, Kevin didn't know how the Predator found them. But he did clearly remember his father coming home frantic and started throwing things into travel bags -not suitcases, bags- things that were pliant and could be thrown around or shoved in tight spaces, or used as cushions where there were none.

Leah demanded to know what was going on. What was wrong? Why was he acting like this? Devin pulled his soulmate to the side, presumably to keep Kevin from overhearing -he was still trying to shelter his son. But Kevin took a glass from the kitchen and put it against the door to their bedroom to listen-in on their conversation. He couldn't remember the exact words, but his father asked if his mother remembered what he told her had brought him to Earth in the first place. That he came here to hide from a maniac that was hell-bent on eradicating his entire species. Well, that crazy genocidal mercenary had found him. He was going kill Devin, and probably Kevin too since he was half-Osmosian.

His mother didn't have to be told twice. Leah started helping Devin pack. Only essentials. Clean underwear, one change of warm weather clothes, one change of cold weather clothes, a spare jacket. Good shoes for running and spare socks. She packed a bag for herself and for Kevin. The only non-essential item she took was a piece of jewelry. A small gold locket. It was a family heirloom. Her grandmother had smuggled it over from Poland and inside it was Leah and Devin's wedding photo. She slipped it around her neck before helping her eleven-year-old son into his backpack.

That was about the time the door to their house burst open.

Kevin had just the briefest of glimpses of a large human figure wearing alien armor of a design he didn't know standing in the broken doorway. His mother swept him up into her arms before he could see more. Holding him against herself so that he couldn't see what was going on. Instinctively, he grabbed for a fistful of his mother's shirt, his hand closing around the locket, the sensation of the cool metal against his skin soothing his anxiety.

Devin grabbed his wife, pushing both her and their son behind him. "Leah, take Kevin and run. Take the car. Get out of here!"

Hugging her son tightly, pressing his face to her chest so that he couldn't see anything. But Kevin still heard the new and unfamiliar, but very distinct sounds of a struggle. His father going up against the intruder. The familiar but alien sound of metal flowing over flesh as Devin absorbed the metal of a kiddish cup on their mantel. The impact sound of blows as fists or weapons fell against armor. Grunts and groans as the two men collided in combat. Kevin didn't see a bit of it, but he heard every sound, and every sound was committed to memory. Even so young, he already knew that if he survived this, he would still be hearing the sounds of that fight in his nightmares for years to come.

Just like he'd be seeing the face of the attacker. Framed in the broken doorway. An old and lined face. Earthling - _human_. Hard eyes. A creased forehead crowned by white hair. Kevin would never forget it.

The garage was eerily quiet compared to the chaos of the house they just left. Leah set Kevin on his feet. His hand was still on her locket and the chain broke when she lifted her head back up. But she didn't pause to take it from him. Getting her baby to safety was more important than a bit of jewelry -even if it was an heirloom. Kevin put the locket in his pocket. She fumbled with the keys. Two cars, the house keys, and her work keys, all on the same ring. It was a bit much to sort through when one was in a panic and a rush.

The door to the garage burst open behind them and for half a moment Kevin thought his dad had won and the intruder was defeated. They could come back inside and Devin would explain what in the world just happened.

But it wasn't Devin Levin standing in the door that connected the garage to the house. It was the intruder. Large and wide. Intimidating in his metallic-grey and black armor. White haired, hard eyed, wrinkle faced, and frowning.

"What did you do with my husband?" Leah demanded.

But the stranger wasn't listening. His eyes fell on the boy clinging to his mother's hip. "He Osmosian too?"

He only wanted Osmosians? So, this must be the Predator his father warned him about. The one that had been hunting their people for at least two generations -three now, if you counted Kevin.

Leah shoved her son back, trying to put as much distance between him and their attacker as she should. Kevin stumbled backwards, his feet unsure and clumsy under him. He tripped over his own toes and fell backwards onto one of his father's worktables filled alien tech. Various cylinders, lengths of wire, computer boards, and complete devices not yet taken apart fell on the floor.

"No." Kevin heard his mother growl. It was a bold faced lie and the intruder would know it. Kevin looked too much like his father and the stranger already knew Devin as an Osmosian. "He's just a child!"

"Children grow up." The Predator informed her.

Kevin began fishing around through the debris of alien tech that fell around him for something that looked like a weapon. He could absorb energy, but not matter yet. Unless someone broke open the wall and exposed some wires, or popped the hood of the car so he could juice the battery, there wasn't really much the your Osmosian could do to protect his mother.

"Why are you doing this!?" Leah demanded.

Kevin found something that looked like it could have been a gun. A round disc with a red lens on a handle with a thumb trigger. His father called it a... a Null... a Null something. At the moment Kevin neither remembered nor cared. He lifted the weapon, pointing the red lens at the intruder. The old man's eyes widened in recognition. Kevin might not know what it was he was holding, but the intruder certainly did. He pulled a hand blaster from a side-holster and pointed it, not at the boy, but at his mother.

"Put the Null Void projector down, son." He said.

"I'm not you're son!" Kevin snarled at the man. He was Devin Levin's son. He was an Osmosian.

Then it occurred to Kevin, he couldn't access the energy in the house's electrical wiring, or in the car's battery. But the alien tech he was holding had to have a power-cell in it. Otherwise, how would it work? He gave the thing in his hands another look. Quick, but more critical this time. If he could just take the focusing lends off...

"What are you doing!?" Demanded the Predator. "Don't do that!"

If the bad guy didn't want him to do it then it _must_ be a good idea!

With a brute strength no normal human eleven-year-old should have, Kevin ripped the focusing lends off the Null Void projector.

He was planning to absorb its energy and use it to fight the intruder, protect his mother, and maybe get back inside the house and see what happened to his father. But that wasn't what happened. Kevin didn't absorb the device's energy. He didn't get the chance to. As soon as the lends was off, the Null Void projector went haywire. Red light, like lightning radiating out from it. Kevin heard his mother scream and saw the Predator throw his arms up to shield his face, backing up as if in retreat. That was about the last thing he saw before he was engulfed in a bubble of the odd red light.

…

When he woke up, Kevin didn't know where he was.

He was laying on his back. He knew that much. Opening his eyes, the young Osmosian saw the wreckage of what once was his parents garage in a near perfect circle around him. Almost the whole garage. As if a complete sphere had been cut out of the building with Kevin at the center. Everything was some version or another of broken. Even Kevin himself didn't feel all that great. But he was alive and the Predator was nowhere to be found.

"Mom...?" Kevin called hesitantly.

There was no answer. He might have escaped the Predator, but he also left his mother behind in the process.

"Mom!" Kevin tried again, more distressed this time.

He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring an unfamiliar stiffness in his joints. The Osmosian looked down at himself to see that his legs were covered in a layer of gray concrete. The same gray concrete of the garage floor. At some point in the blast, he instinctively just absorbed the matter around him in an effort to protect himself. He must have done it subconsciously because Kevin didn't remember absorbing anything -heck! he hadn't even learned how to absorb matter yet!

Kicking out the broken garage roll-up door, Kevin stepped outside to find himself no longer on Earth. The pile of rubble that had formerly been his parents garage had landed dangerously close to the edge of an asteroid. An asteroid that was floating in mid-air -or something like mid-air. All round him, out in front as far as Kevin's eyes could see, above him where a sky would normally be, and as far below the asteroid as the boy dared to look was an expanse of red.

A mottled sea and sky without horizon in shades of scarlet and crimson, brick and cherry.

"Mom!" Kevin called a third time, tears stinging his eyes.

But there was still no answer. His mother was gone.

Kevin was alone.

Falling to his knees, the boy began to cry. He didn't know what had happened, he didn't know where he was, he didn't know where his parents were or even what had happened to them. He had escaped the Predator, but was now all alone in a strange alien... _place_ , and didn't know how to get home. He didn't even know if he should go home. If his parents were... _gone_ , what was there for him back home? Kevin sniffed and wiped tears from his eyes, but more kept falling.

He let out a loud sob. Then another. He was practically bawling now. He hadn't cried like this in years. Not since he was very, very young. But he was alone, and scared, and couldn't think. For all he knew his father died protecting him and he killed his own mother in that blast. Kevin was so twisted up with emotion, his body couldn't do anything else.

He heard a growl somewhere next to him and lifted his head. Blinking tear-blurred eyes, Kevin saw three creatures creeping closer to him.

They looked sort of like dogs. Dogs without eyes or ears. Round heads attached to their backs without the need of a neck. Wide mouths full of sharp teeth and dripping saliva. Kevin didn't know what they were, he was sure his father could have named them, but his father wasn't here right now. But even not knowing what they were, it didn't take an expert to realize they weren't friendly. Wiping his eyes one more time, Kevin tried climbing back to his feet on his stiff, concrete clad legs.

But the action was a little too slow. They alien-dog-creature-things were on him before the Osmosian could fully stand.

The first one, presumably the leader of the pack, pounced at the boy, and Kevin was thrown back on the ground mid-stand. He landed flat on his back, kicking up. One concrete covered foot caught the creature in its mid-section where the ribs would be on a terrestrial Earthling dog. The alien yelped in pain and stumbled off the Osmosian. But no sooner was the first one off him than the other two descended on him in its place. One biting into the concrete of his leg, its teeth chipping away at the armor. The other sank its fangs into the unprotected flesh of his arm.

Kevin screamed in pain.

The scent of his blood filled the beasts with confidence and the one Kevin originally managed to kick off him was back. It closed its jaw around his other arm, biting down hard and pulling. All three of the creatures were pulling him in different directions. They were going to rip him apart!

But it was all Kevin could do to kick with his one free leg and scream.

He screamed so hard, and so loud, it felt like his throat might bleed as much as his arms were.

There was a loud pop as one of his shoulders was dislocated and pain lanced up and down his whole side.

Kevin closed his eyes. He was going to die. He was going to die here in -he didn't even know where- he was going to be torn apart by creatures he'd never seen before, and his parents (assuming they were even still alive) would never know what happened to him.

Then, just as he was about to give up hope, there was the sound of a shot.

It wasn't the _pew_ of a laser. But it wasn't the _BANG_ of a gun either. It was more like the _BAH-yew_ of a plasma rifle. It was high level alien tech. Kevin's father wouldn't even let him in the garage when he was working with plasma rifles. A beam of highly concentrated energy lanced one of the beasts attacking Kevin, shooting right through its head. The animal collapsed on top of the Osmosian. Dead instantly.

The other two paused, looking up in the direction the shot had come from.

It was hard for Kevin to do the same, pinned down under the heavy weight of a dead alien body.

Two other shots dispatched the other two creatures and Kevin soon found himself smothered under three dead alien bodies. They weighed down his chest and compressed his lungs. The boy couldn't inhale a breath. He couldn't breath! He managed to survive being attacked only to die with his body buried under theirs.

"Three Vulpimancers." Said a voice, sounding muffled, far away, and indistinct. "What was it they were after? I've never seen a structure like that in the Null Void."

One of the bodies was yanked off the top of the pile and Kevin gasped in a breath of air. It smelled fowl. The natural body odor of the creatures -Vulpimancers?- mingled with the new but no less potent scent of death (and maybe a bit of sweat and urine from Kevin).

"Its a kid!" Exclaimed the other that had pulled the body off the pile, and for the first time Kevin was able to catch a glimpse of his saviors.

Three of them. Dressed in all black. Helmets with tinted visors obscuring their faces. Vocoders in the helmets must have obscured their voices, because they all seemed to use the same synthetic radio voice. They looked human in shape, but then, Kevin's own father looked human in shape and he wasn't. The Osmosian knew better than to assume. But at least one of them was definitely female.

"A child?" Asked one of the others. "What kind?"

The other two bodies were kicked off him and the first one to approach him reached down to grab a fist full of Kevin's shirt and pulled him to his feet. More of his concrete armor crumbled away at the action. His shoulder hurt and his arms were still bleeding. But he was feeling much more emotionally stable. No. Not stable. That wasn't right. Numb. Kevin was feeling emotionally numb. So much had happened to him in only a few hours. He didn't know how to process it. So, he was just shutting down.

"Looks human to me." Said the female.

"Humans don't have stone feet, Swift." Said one of the males. Kevin decided he must be the leader. He knelt down in front of the boy and took off his helmet. Beneath it was revealed the face of a middle aged human male with dark hair balding prematurely. "What are you, young man?"

Even in excruciating pain, one arm hanging from the shoulder in a wrong way, and bleeding profusely from still untended bites, Kevin knew not to answer. His father always warned him not to tell people he was Osmosian. Normal Earthlings wouldn't know what an Osmosian was, they wouldn't understand that he was half-alien. After all he looked human not alien. Those that did know what an Osmosian was and did understand that he was saying he was half-alien could be agents of the Predator, looking for prey to turn in and slaughter.

"Alone." Kevin answered. "I'm alone."

"Clearly. Since no one else came to your aid." Nodded the balled man. He looked up at the other two. "Leander, go check the building just in case. Swift, bag the Vulpimancers. And you, young man, need some medical attention."

He tried to pick Kevin up.

But the Osmosian pulled struggled out of his grip. "I don't know you."

"Well, I don't know you either." Replied the stranger.

A pause.

Then, "Kevin." He said. "My name is Kevin E. Levin."

"Well, Kevin E. Levin, I'm Hector Servantis." The baled man introduced himself. "And this here is Dana Swift. The one coming back out of your, uh, house is Troy Leander. Where's your family? Children don't tend to get out this far into the wild Void on their own. Are your parents near by?"

Kevin couldn't help the tears that welled back up in his eyes at the reminded of his parents. His father grappling with the Predator in order to give him and his mother a chance to get away, and his mother... Kevin didn't even know what happened to his mother. He was closest to the blast that teleported him here. But she wasn't, and when he woke up inside the broken garage she wasn't there.

"My parents are dead." He sobbed.

Servantis sighed, as if with resignation. "Then you'll come with us. We'll patch you up at our base and maybe after you'll tell me what happened."

Kevin nodded slowly and let the older man pick him up. He had lost so much blood he was pretty sure he wouldn't have been able to walk anyway. Held in Servantis' arms, the boy's eyes drifted closed from exhaustion. The last conscious thought he had before falling unconscious was the image of the Predator's face framed in the doorway of his house. White haired, dark eyed, old, lined, and severe. Kevin would remember that face all his life.

…


	2. Max

Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or its sequels, spin-offs and related characters. All is the property of Man of Action and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

(A/N: According to the Wiki, Max was 17 years old when he met Verdona. That sounds absurd to me because Max was already an air force pilot at that point. So, until someone can explain to me how Max could enlist, make it through basic training, be given a plane, and become a squadron leader all before he reaches the age of majority, I'm just gonna go ahead and say he was actually 21 in that episode. So, he's 21 in this chapter. Enjoy.)

Star Crossed

Prologue: Max

The night Max was kicked out of the Air Force was the same night he met his soulmate.

In some ways, one event could not have happened without the other.

It was supposed to be a routine drill. Max was the leader of his squadron and he was putting his wingmen through the paces. Leading with an attack formation that he planned to have them tradition into a feint. But then, something wholly unexpected happened. An unidentified bogie cut across his scope, and a few seconds later, Max caught sight of a flying saucer.

The craft game him an unfamiliar feeling. Like there was something on it he needed. Like the craft was holding something that was meant for him, but he couldn't get it unless it was taken down. He didn't understand the feeling, but has hands were moving on instinct without the curtesy of consulting his conscious brain. Fist wrapped around the F-104A flight stick, Max squeezed the trigger, and kept it squeezed until the saucer went down -taking that 'something' he needed with it.

The action got him in trouble with his superiors. It wasn't supposed to be a combat drill, they were just supposed to be polishing their flight formations. And even if it had been a combat drill, the Earth Air Force did not fire on undeclared space craft! Even if they were making an unsanctioned landing in a deserted spit of desert far from any of the shiny new space ports that had been constructed around the planet. Earth was still new to the whole inter-galactic travel and commerce thing, and their alien visitors were still new to Earth. Mistakes like this were bound to happen. They did not want to earn a reputation for shooting people for parking violations!

Max was dishonorably discharged that same night.

He drove away frustrated, angry, and confused. They didn't understand. They weren't up there. It wasn't a conscious decision. His fingers acted on their own. There was something on that flying saucer he needed. It was a part of him. He just didn't know what it was. The discharge was unfair!

But as angry as he was over being kicked out of the Air Force, he wanted to find the flying saucer more. He needed to find where it went down. He needed to find that indistinct 'something' that was a part of him. He swerved his car off the road. Veering into the desert to look for it. It was miles from the base where the alien craft went down, and he hadn't actually seen where it crashed. But he was on a mission. He wanted that piece of himself he'd sensed.

Also, maybe he wanted to know what kind of hair-brained moron would try and land outside of a designated landing zone on a world that was still new and adjusting to no longer being alone in the universe! What did they think was going to happen? Of course a military trained pilot would shoot them down!

Max did not find the flying saucer.

Instead, he found two women, running through the desert.

The car came to a grinding halt, the pads of his breaks making an uncomfortable screeching sound, a cloud of dust being kicked up around the whole vehicle.

The women seemed not to notice though. They ran right up to him.

One of them was wearing a powder blue cardigan and white blouse above a pair of black jax pants, and Max wasn't quite sure how he felt about women wearing pants. He knew it was all the rage now, and yeah, some of them did outline the shape of the female form very nicely. But, overall, he just wasn't sure.

The other one was at least wearing a dress like a nice girl. A white shift dress with black piping. The skirt came to above her knees which technically made it a mini-skirt by contemporary classifications and Max took a moment to appreciate the shape of her exposed legs.

It was the second one, the one in the dress, that came up to the driver's side window. She flashed him a polite smile, but there was tension behind her eyes.

The moment their eyes met, however, all the concealed tension and polite pretense melted away to be replaced by a unique kind of recognition. Max felt it too. Like an indistinct and ephemeral something passed between them. A bolt of lightning, or a shudder of energy. An abrupt moment of recognition. This. Her. This is part of me. This is a part of myself. This is what I was looking for. She is what I was looking for. An invisible thread that had always been there made it's self known. Pulling them tighter together and tying a knot. Turning the two individuals into one whole and complete entity. A single entity, but was still housed within two separate bodies.

He'd never met the woman before, he didn't even know her name. But he felt like he'd known her his whole life. Like he'd managed to live these past twenty-one years without a part of himself. But here it was. Here she was. His other half. He was complete now. _They_ were complete. Max had read about soulmate meetings, he's seen them depicted in the theaters. It was a favored trope of the talkie dramas. But outside of the silver screen and dime store pulp novels, soulmates were objectively rare. Only one in ten pairs actually found each other in one lifetime. Only one tenth of the population in any given generation got to meet their soulmate. Max never imagined he'd find his other half. Certainly, he never imagined finding her out in the middle of the desert.

He suddenly realized that neither of them had said anything. Then he realized his mouth had gone very, very dry.

"My sister and I need a ride." She spoke first.

He was still trying to work some moisture back into his throat and so only manage to croak. "Get in."

They didn't have to be told twice. His soulmate came around to the passenger side while the one in the pants -her sister, okay- climbed in the back.

Max tossed a roguish smile sideways at his other half. "So, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Only after this question was out of his mouth did it occur to him that he probably should have asked for her name before throwing out a cheap and overused pick-up line. She was his soulmate after all, she deserved better than that!

"Just drive." Commanded her sister from the back seat.

"What's your hurry?" Max asked. He'd just found his soulmate, he should be allowed to stop and flirt with her a bit.

Said soulmate put one slender hand over his on the steering wheel, the cool metal of a bracelet clinking against his wristwatch. She offered him a placating smile. "Please."

Well how could he argue against that?

Pulling an almost-doughnut and kicking up even more dust, Max turned his car around and headed back to the highway. In his rearview mirror, in the dust, he thought he saw the figure of a man. But it was dark against darkness out there in the desert with only the stars to light what was behind him, so Max couldn't tell. But he was sure that his soulmate would have said something if they were leaving one of their friends behind.

Not far down the road was a diner. Max pulled in, planning to buy dinner for his soulmate and let her sister use the pay phone.

"We shouldn't stop." The sister said from the back seat.

"Aren't you ladies hungry?" Max asked.

"No, we need to keep moving!" Snarled the sister.

His soulmate turned her head, peering into the backseat at her sister. "We need to get our bearings, Dolyn. We don't even know where we are."

"You ladies lost?" Max asked.

The sister -Dolyn, weird name for a girl, but okay- looked between the two. She shot her sister a frustrated look, and Max an icy glare, before she stormed out of the car. Coming around to the passenger side, she stuck her wrist under her sister's nose. A thin metal bracelet identical to the one Max's soulmate wore encircled her slender arm. "Well, while you're making eyes at the primitive native boy, I'm gonna find a way to get these off!"

Dolyn stormed off.

Max watched her walk around to the back of the diner. When she disappeared behind the building, he turned back to his soulmate. "Did she call me a 'primitive native'?"

Soulmate just tucked a strand of flame-red hair behind her ear.

"Are you..."

She offered a self-conscious smile. "My sister and I are not from this planet."

Then everything clicked in Max's head. She was in that flying saucer he shot down. She was that mysterious missing thing he need and the saucer was keeping him from. His soulmate. His other half. And he crashed her ship. "Did- did I just strand you here? Is that why you're sister's mad?"

"No, no!" She shook her head, reaching across the center console she placed both her hands over his. "I could sense you up there. As soon as the ship entered the lower atmosphere I knew you were here. I wanted you to shoot us down! It was the crash that allowed us to escape. You saved us!"

Max grabbed her hands, an uncomfortable realization coming to him. "Are you in danger!?"

There was the pause of a heartbeat. For half a second Max thought his soulmate was about to lie to him. Tell him that, no, she wasn't in danger, everything was fine. Spare his feelings and put him at ease. But then her face fell. She looked away from him when she admitted, "We were being held captive. An Osmosian wanted to take us back to his home planet."

Admittedly, Max didn't know what an Osmosian was. But from context he could assume it was another species of alien. One of the thousands that Earth had opened its metaphorical boarders to and opened up trade with. Humanity was still trying to figure out its role in the universe and the xenopolitics that would go with it. Were these 'Osmosians' trafficking other sentient beings?

"But you're not Osmosian." He pitched it like a question, but Max meant it more as a statement, really. She looked so human! But then, a number of alien species were shaped like humans. And those that weren't could fake the shape through the use of highly advanced tech.

Here she smiled. A true smile. She was proud of what she was and happy to share. "Dolyn and I are Anodites."

Max had no idea what that was either.

So, she elaborated. "We're beings made of pure energy." A pause. "We're basically souls that can make our own bodies."

"Souls that can-" He gaped at her. But, she was his soulmate. His soulmate hadn't been incarnated in a mortal form like he had, she just up and decided to take a shape that was compatible with his. How did she even know he was human at all? He'd never met her before in this lifetime.

She smiled at him again. "Its good to see you again. What's your name in this life?"

He gaped for a moment or two, feeling like the conversation was somehow moving faster than he was and leaving him behind. Then he blinked, catching up with himself. "Max. My name is Max Tennyson. And you are..."

"Still Verdona." She told him.

"Verdona..." He tested the name on his tongue. Another alien name like her sister's. Dolyn and Verdona, Anodite sisters. Well, it made sense that they would have strange names. They weren't even from Earth. He leaned in as if to kiss her. It was said that fresh soul-bonds craved physical contact. The two spirits wanted to become one, but were still separated by physical bodies. The closest they could get to becoming one was the intertwining of bodies.

Verdona also leaned in, lips parted.

The kiss was clumsy. Max was stretching over the car's center console and Verdona was not used to this new body of his, with its new face that had a nose. It was more of a gently knocking together of faces than a proper kiss. But the contact was what they really wanted. Holding hands, fingers intertwined, foreheads pressed together.

"I'll get better at this." Max promised her.

"We need to relearn it in every life." She replied.

Fingers still intertwined, they lowered their hands and Verdona's bracelet clinked against the center console. Max paused, looking down at it. It was gray and shiny, not like silver or white gold. It looked almost like surgical steel. The red gem in the center of the band wasn't a gem at all but some kind of micro chip. Clearly alien tech, not fashion. "Your sister wanted to get these off?"

Verdona nodded. "Its Synthroid technology. The Osmosian is using them to suppress our powers so we're less likely to fight back."

Lifting her hand, Max gave the thing another critical examination. There didn't seem to be any visible clasp or closure. It just looked like one solid ring of metal. But it had to open somehow, otherwise, how could this evil Osmosian guy have gotten it on her wrist in the first place. Letting go of one of Verdona's hands, Max reached into his pocket to pull out his knife. Rule 9: Never go anywhere without a knife. He slipped the knife under the bracelet, angling the blade away from his soulmate's skin and tried to cut the alien device off.

The blade of his knife broke instead.

"It'll take more than that." Verdona told him.

"I'll get this thing off you." Max promised her. "And I'll save you from that Osmosian guy, too!"

They both leaned in for another kiss. This one was better than the first. Less knocking together of faces and more gently pressing together of lips. Max leaned one way and Verdona leaned the other. Their noses did not collide and their mouths were allowed to meet.

A hand suddenly slamming against the windshield shattered the moment, however.

Dolyn had apparently returned from her unsuccessful search for something to get the bracelets off, but apparently she had found something else instead.

"We have to leave!" She barked, climbing back into the car behind her sister. "We have to leave now!"

"Whoah! Hold your horses! What's going on?" Max asked.

"He found us!" Dolyn snapped, as if this shouldn't be obvious. She assumed Verdona would have filled him in at least a little bit on their troubles and why they were stranded on this primitive spit of a rock on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy. Dolyn jabbed a finger between them, pointing out the front windshield.

Max followed her finger and saw a man advancing towards them.

Except... except he didn't look entirely human. Oh, he was human shaped, that was for sure. But then, Max's soulmate was human shaped. It tended to be a common shape out there in the universe and didn't mean much. But the hairline was too sharp and defined. To achieve a look like that on a normal human they would have to shave their forehead back or spend painful hours plucking their hair out. No one would be willing to do that to themselves -especially not to give themselves the appearance of a receding hairline.

What that sharply angled hairline displayed were four short rounded horns, two on each side, and covered in pale red skin. He was dressed in a brown robe that hung open, revealing a well muscled chest, definitely someone used to physical activity -maybe even combat- and he carried an odd looking kind of spear. With a fin or wing shaped blade at the end, more like a halberd but much, much lighter.

"Is that the Osmosian?" Max asked.

"Just drive!" Dolyn shouted.

"Please." Verdona echoed her sister's sentiment.

Prompted by his soulmate, Max turned the engine over and backed out of the diner's parking lot, tires screeching. The moment the car was back out on the highway, he sped off into the night, moving so fast his taillights left streaks of red in the air.

He didn't have any sort of destination in mind, he was just driving. Empty desert, rest stops, and highway exits speeding past.

In the back seat, Dolyn ignored her seatbelt in favor of kneeling on the seat, looking behind them to see if the Osmosian was following.

"How do we get those bracelets off you?" Max asked after having gone several miles with no plan or destination.

"They're made of a super-dense alloy not found on your planet." Dolyn growled at him. "I highly doubt there's anything on this world that would break them."

"Maybe not." Max agreed. "But I can try."

He turned from the main highway and onto a less traveled but better maintained road. Fresh asphalt and clear lines. The road lead up to the main entrance of a smelting plant. Max had flown over it dozens of times during training maneuvers. They smelted copper here. Sure, copper wasn't the same as a 'super-dens alien alloy', but it was the best thing he could come up with on such short notice with so few options available.

Pulling right up to the main entrance, and ignoring the shouts from the plant's security guard, Max lead Verdona and her sister into the building. He went straight to a tool cabinet and pulled out the biggest pair of bolt-cutters he could find.

"Now hold still..."

Verdona held her arm up, holding her sister's hand with the other. She tried to keep absolutely still as Max closed the blades of the bolt cutters on the bracelet's band. He squeezed the sheers together, and met with significant resistant. He put more effort into it, straining his muscles to increase the pressure and get the manacle off his soulmate's wrist. Metal groaned and Max thought he was making progress. It was about to break! At least, it sounded like _something_ was about to break. Overtaxing his muscles and risking self injury, Max put the last of his strength and force into it.

Then the bolt cutters broke.

Just like his pocket knife had.

"Brilliant." Dolyn scoffed, letting go of her sister's hand and crossing her arms over her chest. "Any other bright ideas?"

"We're in a metal works plant." Max told her. "There's got to be _something_ here that can get those bracelets off!"

But before any of them could start brainstorming, a group of frightened workers ran past them. Shouting expletives and racial slurs for aliens. Max and the two Anodites looked in the direction they were running from, seeing a cloud of hissing steam that was not supposed to be there. Out of the mist, walking much too slowly and calmly to be another terrified worker, was the figure of a man.

The silhouette wasn't that of a blue-collar-Joe wearing a collard shirt and jeans, the outline was robes draped over broad shoulders, and spear carried in one hand. Before the figure even fully stepped out of the fog, Max knew it was the Osmosian that had caught up with them again.

"Are you done running?" He asked in a tone that was more patient and amused than the raging frustration Max would have expected from someone who had been hunting them almost all night.

Max placed himself between the hostile alien and the two frightened women. He clutched one half of the broken bolt cutters in his hands and swung it at the Osmosian's head.

The blow didn't connect, he blocked it effortlessly with the poll of his spear. But for the first time since Max ran into Verdona and her sister, the Osmosian focussed his eyes on the human. As if realizing that the irritating gnat buzzing around was actually an irritating mosquito that needed to be squished.

Swinging the shaft of his spear, the Osmosian caught Max in the side. It wasn't the bladed part, so there was no open wound. But the blow was still hard enough to send the perfectly normal human flying across the room. He impacted the very same tool cabinet he'd originally gotten his bolt-cutters from. With Max out of the way, the Osmosian closed the distance to the Anodite sisters.

"Why can't you leave us alone, Aggregor!" Dolyn shouted, practically cried really.

"Come back with me, my Lovely Dolyn, and your sister doesn't have to be involved." The Osmosian -Aggregor- informed her.

Verdona all but jumped between the two, wrapping her arms around her sister and glaring murderously at Aggregor. "She's not your lovely anything!" She snarled at him. "You're not her soulmate, Aggregor, and you can't have her! I won't let you!"

"So, we're back where we started." He sighed. Sighed! As if this were nothing more than a mild inconvenience. "Then I'll just have to take you both."

He grabbed Verdona by the wrist and forcefully pulled her away from her sister.

Verdona let out a yelp of pain at just how tight his grip was.

His soulmate's cry startled Max out of the daze of being thrown into a shed full of pointy tools, and he groped around him, looking for anything he could use as a weapon. His hand closed over the handle of a hammer, and he threw it at Aggregor. It bounced off the Osmosian's head with an almost comical ' _thunk'_ and he turned a glare back at the human. Why couldn't lower creatures learn when to stay down and not get themselves involved in matters that did not concern them?

Twirling his spear to charge up its kinetic energy, Aggregor leveled the spear at Max's chest and let loose a wide arc of what looked like electricity. The human cried in pain and -finally- fell unconscious.

"Max!" Verdona called in concern. But he didn't respond. He was out cold.

Aggregor hit her in the stomach, causing the woman to double over in pain. A second blow to the back of the neck ensure that she too fell unconscious. The Osmosian hefted the unconscious Anodite over one shoulder, finally turning his attention back to the one he'd come for. "Now, Dolyn, are you going to come quietly, or do I have to give you the same treatment I just gave your sister?"

Dolyn looked at her sister, hanging limply over the Osmosian's shoulder. She glanced momentarily at the human that had been helping them, but he was similarly unconscious and of no help to anyone. There weren't many options for the Anodite to take, and with the Osmosian's hands on her sister, he had a hostage and she had nothing with which to bargain. Nodding with submission, Dolyn fell in step beside him.

…

Max didn't know how long he had been unconscious.

It was a lot cooler when he finally opened his eyes. The metal works having stopped. There was a hole in the wall that could now be seen without all the steam and mist of the plant obscuring his vision. That must have been how the Osmosian got in and why the workers had run screaming. From outside the gap in the wall, Max saw the blue and red flashing lights of police cars. While all the commotion was going on, someone must have called the police.

Forcing himself to stand, Max pulled himself out of the tool cabinet he was slumped in. He did not have time to stay and dick around with the dickies. He didn't know how long he was out, and he didn't know how much of a head start the Osmosian had on him. Max needed to find them. He needed to save his soulmate.

Staggering outside, Max looked out over the wide desert scape and wondered how he was even going to find them. His car was still parked in the lot, so he had transportation, but he didn't know where Verdona was, where the Osmosian had taken her and her sister. Max sat in the diver's seat of his car and thought.

Aggregor had both Anodites, but his ship was shot down. He didn't have a way off planet. Not unless he went to one of the four spaceports Earth had. But the closest one was in Florida, over halfway across the continent. At least a four day drive. Max didn't know how the Osmosian was traveling, but even he couldn't make it all the way to Florida in one night. There was still his own ship, but Aggregor would have to repair it before he could go anywhere. Still, with two uncooperative prisoners, it would be the Osmosian's best bet.

Max didn't see where the ship went down. But it couldn't have been far from where he first picked up Verdona and her sister.

Turning over the engine, Max peeled out of the smelting plant's parking lot just as a police officer was coming over to him to take his statement.

He practically flew over the highway, he was speeding so fast. The cabin of the car would give a little tremor every now and again from the sheer pressure the rushing air put on the frame. Going so fast, Max almost missed it, the place he originally turned off and found Verdona. It wasn't an actual exit. Just a flat spit of desert where the dusty terrain was level with the paved surface of the highway and one could turn off without doing much damage to their undercarriage. He did slow down once it was dust and gravel under him instead of smooth road.

Max could feel it again. That ephemeral 'pull' as if there were a part of himself that he was close to but still separated from. It had to be Verdona, his soulmate. It was the same feeling he got up in the air, right before he shot the flying saucer down.

He passed the stop where they came running up to his car, and kept driving. Finally, he came to a silver disc of a craft out in the middle of nowhere.

Verdona and Dolyn were shackled to the outside of the craft with some kind of energy cuffs fixated directly to the outer hull. Aggregor had a pair of goggles over his eyes and some kind of alien welding tool in his hands. He was repairing the damage Max did to his ship in flight. Looks like the 'primitive local's' guess was right. His ship was too damaged for him to leave, but he was going to try and leave in his own ship.

Max's car came to a screeching halt only a few feet from Aggregor, it kicked up a cloud of dust, adding a bit of drama as he exited the car.

"Let them go!" He snarled at the Osmosian.

Putting down his welding tool, Aggregor lifted his goggles and looked at him. Impatient and unimpressed. "Or you'll what?"

"I'll stop you!" Max vowed.

"Don't do it, Max!" Verdona pleaded from where she was strapped to the hull. "He'll kill you! And we only just found each other in this life!"

"And what would he do to you, Sweetheart?" Max asked.

No, really. What was the Osmosian going to do to her and her sister. He couldn't kill them. Not in the traditional sense. Verdona said she and her sister were 'energy beings' and 'souls that could exist without bodies'. If he killed those human forms they were in, couldn't they just float away? Or whatever souls did. And energy couldn't be created or destroyed. But it could be channeled and used. So, what -really- was the Osmosian planning to do with the sisters if Max didn't intervene and save them?

Taking off his welding goggles the rest of the way, Aggregor picked up his spear. "You're an annoyingly persistent little mosquito. They can watch me kill you as I killed my Lovely Dolyn's soulmate."

Max assumed a boxing stance, although he had no idea how boxing might help against a long range weapon like a spear. But he wasn't going to back down. He had the half of himself to save. "I'm not the one who's gonna die here, Greg!"

Aggregor twirled his spear, getting up a kinetic charge. But this time, Max knew what was coming. When the blast came, he jumped out of the way, rolling in the dirt until he was next to the ship, and Verdona and Dolyn.

"You ladies okay?" He asked, breathless and out of his depth. He looked at the energy cuffs that were holding them to the hull. As much as he knew that it was just high level technology, it really just looked like magic to him. Max didn't understand how the band of glowing power was fixed to the hull, never mind how it was holding his soulmate in place. He had no idea how he was going to release them.

"Have him aim a blast at us." Dolyn commanded. "The energy from the spear will interrupt the power-flow of the cuffs."

"Won't that hut you?" Max asked.

"No more than Verdona having you shoot us out of the sky." Dolyn turned her head to cast a piercing look at her sister.

"We escaped, didn't we?" The other woman shot back.

"Briefly." Dolyn scoffed.

"Well it was better than just crying the whole time!" Verdona snarled back.

"Hey! I'd just watched my soulmate get murdered by my ex-boyfriend, okay! Cut me a little slack!" The sister practically spat.

"You would see her again in her next life!" The other woman reminded her.

"Okay. I'll tell you that after Primitive-Native-Boy over here gets killed in front of us." Dolyn promised. "Don't worry, Ver, you'll see him in his next life!"

That was about all of that conversation Max wanted to hear. He scooped up a rock from the ground and threw it at the Osmosian. "Hey! Greg! You seem to really suck at swatting persistent mosquitos like me!"

"I will smash you into the ground!" Aggregor vowed.

He twirled his spear again, spinning it faster this time to work up power for a stronger blast.

This time, when Aggregor shot at him, instead of jumping to the side, Max dove forward. The energy of the attack arcing over his head. Max had been standing directly in front of the Anodite prisoners and so the Osmosian angled the shot so that it would have hit the human in the head but gone right over the women. Rolling forward, Max grabbed the shaft and pulled. Messing up Aggregor's aim and bringing the energy down enough to course over both Verdona and her sister.

The power of the cuffs holding the Anodites in place flickered for a moment. Then went out. Verdona and Dolyn were free.

Aggregor kicked Max in the stomach to get him off his spear. The human fell into the dirt, clutching his mid-section. Having an alien for a soulmate was harder than he expected.

"Let him go!" Verdona rushed forward. But in the human body she was trapped in, she couldn't do much else than slap the Osmosian across the face.

It made an impressive sound, but didn't do much more than piss him off. Aggregor turned crimson eyes at her, before punching the woman in the face. Verdona went stumbling backwards, tripped over Max, and fell in the dirt. Unconsciously, their hands curled around each other.

"Leave my sister alone!" Now it was Dolyn's turn to rush the Osmosian.

Only instead of delivering an impotent slap, she threw her whole body against Aggregor. The Anodite was light, but the move was surprising and the Osmosian stumbled backwards. He had to drop his spear to keep his balance, but kept his footing. Aggregor closed both hands around Dolyn's wrists, keeping her held close to him. He leaned his face down, mouth only mere centimeters from the Anodites.

"You're mine, Dolyn." His whispered to her bottom lip. "You're mine and I won't let anyone take you away from me. Not your sister, not her backwater mud-ball lover, and not your soulmate."

The already uncomfortably tight pressure on her wrists squeezed tighter and Dolyn barely had the chance to gasp before she felt the Osmosian start to absorb her.

Verdona screamed in horror.

It was the most jarring thing Max had ever seen.

Dolyn's skin turned pale and waxy. Wrinkled and loose as her muscle definition and fat melted away. Her vibrant red hair turned silver, then a dingy gray. Her legs buckled under her, but Aggregor did not release his hold of her. Already loose skin sagged as if there wasn't even a skeleton inside to hold it up. Finally, it fell to the ground and the Osmosian let go.

Max stared wide-eyed at the empty eye-sockets of the face, flattened and empty like a bizarre Halloween mask. In all his twenty-one years, the Earthling had never seen anything like it. A dry, empty, hollowed out husk of a body. Max couldn't take his eyes off it. Was that what the Osmosian was going to do to Verdona?

Max couldn't let that happen.

He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the pain in his mid-section when he moved. He picked up Aggregor's fallen spear. Max didn't pause to note that the Osmosians form had changed slightly. His hair, which had been a straight and sleek raven black, now seemed to defy gravity in waves of star sapphire light. His eyes glowed with the same pink power. Eyes that went wide when Max ran him though with the spear.

Max twisted the blade for good measure, just to make sure. One never really knew with aliens. The Osmosian tried to gasp, but blood trickled out of his mouth instead. His body sagged and Max placed a foot on Aggregor's chest to slide the body off the blade. More blood squirted from the open wound and the Osmosian fell into the dirt to bleed out.

Still clutching the spear, Max stood over him, watching the alien die. Making sure it was over.

When the light faded from his eyes, Max threw the spear in the dirt next to the body. He looked back at Verdona.

His soulmate was on her knees next to the empty skin-sack that was lately her sister's body. Max knelt beside her, wrapping both his arms around her shoulders. He didn't know what comfort he could give really, aside from just being there for her. He didn't know much about her species. Just from the way she talked he sort of got the impression that her species was immortal -or close to it. He reincarnated, and she just met him in his next life. But she didn't reincarnate. What would happen to a soul that couldn't be reborn? Would Verdona never see her sister again?

"I'm sorry." Max whispered into her hair.

Verdona only sobbed into her hands.

Max held her tighter.

When she finally did speak, it wasn't about the loss of her sister. She was still trapped in a powerless mortal body, and marooned on a planet that was alien to her. "The -uh- the control for my bracelet should be in the ship. Can you... can you release us?"

She picked up the empty sack that had been Dolyn's hand. The one with the bracelet.

Pausing for only a moment to press an affectionate kiss to Verdona's temple, Max stood and went into the space ship. He didn't know how to work any of the controls, or even what they were all for. Only about half of them were labeled, but the language they were written in was utterly and completely alien to him. Not knowing what else to do, he just started hitting anything that looked like a button.

Something he hit must have been a latch release of some kind, because a few moment into pressing buttons and hitting switches blindly, a panel on the wall popped open, revealing a small selection of what looked like blasters. Earth was still fairly knew to intergalactic trade, but he was in the military and one of the first things the government started importing were weapons. Max -more or less- knew his way around an alien blaster. Grip shapes and trigger mechanisms differed from species to species, but the basic principal was universal. Point and shoot.

Max selected the simplest looking blaster and shot every single console, screen, and panel that looked like it might control something. When the inside of the flying saucer looked like the trash-compactor scene from Star Wars, Max walked back out to rejoin his soulmate.

The bracelet clicked open and fell off her wrist.

Verdona looked at the bare skin and smiled.

She closed her eyes, letting the confining shape of her human form fade away. Pale Caucasian Earthling skin vanishing to be replaced by dark indigo that glowed violet. Her short crimson hair grew longer and glowed with star sapphire light. Verdona stood -floated actually.

It was all Max could do to just stare at her in awe.

So, _this_ was an Anodite.

This was his soul's other half.

"Thank you, Max." She hovered down to kiss him. This one was nowhere near as awkward as their first two. No uncomfortable knocking together of noses. In this form Verdona didn't have a nose.

"What happens now?" Max asked. He noted that her sister did not have a magical resurrection or revival when the bracelets came off. Dolyn was still gone, and Max was still concerned by what happened to Anodites after they died -assuming, of course, that 'died' was even the correct word.

"Come into space with me." Verdona said. "We can be together until the end of your life."

"Sure." But Max paused. "What about your sister?"

Here, Verdona paused, looking sad. She looked at the empty skin-sack, then to Aggregor's limp body. The bleeding had stopped with his heard and the dirt around him was turned to mud. It looked like Verdona might cry. Except no tears fell and Max wondered if Anodites could cry.

"We're beings made of pure energy." She said. "And energy can't be destroyed. Dolyn will come back. But, she won't be the same Dolyn I knew. She'll be like one of you. Like a mortal being, reincarnated. She won't know me, and... the universe is a big place. I might never see her again."

Max wanted to wrap his arms around her again. But she was hovering just a little too high for him. So all Max could do was make her a promise.

"This is something that could happen to you?" He looked back at Dolyn's empty skin-sack. "I won't let it happen to you. I promise. I'll keep you safe, Verdona. Even if I have to hunt down and kill every Osmosian in the universe!"

…


End file.
